


The Forgotten Library

by AliceMo



Category: Rapunzel (Fairy Tale), Tangled (2010)
Genre: Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-03
Updated: 2016-07-03
Packaged: 2018-07-19 18:45:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7373242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AliceMo/pseuds/AliceMo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rapunzel is getting adjusted to her new life in the castle and decides to go exploring. She is not expecting to find a library and is even more surprised by what it contains.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Forgotten Library

**Author's Note:**

> Tangled it owned by Disney. I do not claim to own Tangled or its characters.

“This is the story of how I died. But don’t worry, this is actually a really fun story and really it isn’t even mine …. Oh, what? Wait you already know that one?… oh well that’s a little embarrassing… Uh, well what about this one?

  
This is the story of a girl named Rapunzel. Yeah, yeah I know same girl, but have you ever heard the one about what happened after she was reunited with her parents and her kingdom? No? It’s a good one!”

  
*****

  
The week after the celebration was a quiet one. People moved throughout the castle and the city slowly cleaning up what the party goers had left behind. Rapunzel was now beginning to get settled into her new home. While attending a meeting of the court, she began to wish that she was able to help the people that visited the castle asking for aid. If only she was still able to use her hair’s magic power. To get away from the court for a little while she decided to explore her new home and clear her head a little.

  
“It’s so big Pascal!” she said as they turned down yet another massive hallway. This one had even more doors than the last. She shook her head in wonderment of her new home and life. How different it was to go from a small tower with only the basics to a palace and a kingdom that had everything anyone could ever hope for. Well except for Eugene. He had gone away on patrol with the castle guard in order to have his past crimes against the kingdom erased. She missed him more each day.

  
Pushing Eugene from her thoughts she continued her exploration of her new home. She came to the largest room she had yet to see and it was filled with books.  
“Another library Pascal!” she exclaimed as she spun around looking in every direction she could. “It has more books than I could ever read.”

  
The library was an old one, long since forgotten by most of the castle. Only a few knew of its existence now and even fewer knew what it contained. Rapunzel entered the library and began looking at all the different books, some having very strange titles.

  
She picked up one of the newest looking books off of a low shelf by the door. It was a light shade of red with golden letters written down the spine. They said, “Elizabeth Bosso.” Rapunzel growing more curious by the second opened it to the first page.

  
It read:

_October 2, 1820_

  
“That was yesterday,” she thought. “That’s weird.” She read on.

  
_Her eyes opened at 6:58 p.m. She began to cry mere seconds later. She was rubbed roughly by a large towel and placed in a woman’s arms._

  
“Pascal, what do you think this is?” Pascal squeaked with a shrug in reply. She flipped through the rest of the book but most of its pages were blank.

  
She shrugged it off and set the strange book down. She ventured further into the library and came across a bright yellow book. Rapunzel blew the dust off the cover and moved her fingers over the large golden flower that was pictured on the cover.

  
She opened the old book to a random page and began to read.

  
_Description: A single small golden flower that resembles a lily that grows when a single drop of sunlight falls to the earth, giving the flower magic powers._  
_Location: unknown_

  
_Caution: The power of the Magic Golden Flower is immense as it can heal the sick and reverse the aging process. Nothing else holds the power it does. The Magic Golden Flower should be used with caution, as its full power is still unknown. Once cut the flower dies and loses its magic._

  
The book continued to give accounts of other golden flowers that have been found throughout history that had been used to help those who found them.

  
Rapunzel, excited that she might finally be able to help people again, ran back through the halls to find her parents. “They need to know about this!” she told Pascal, as he held on for dear life while she sprinted around another corner. Luckily when she found them, they were just finishing up with court.

  
“Mom! Dad! Look at this book I found in the library! It says that we can heal people,” she managed to get out in her excitement. “Something I’ve been wanting to do for a while now,” she mumbled.

  
Her father took the book and looked at it carefully. Then he turned to his wife, “This must be how they knew about the flower.”

  
The queen, moving in to have a closer look at the book, said “Yes, this must be it. It all makes sense.”

  
Rapunzel was quite confused. “What could they possibly be talking about?” she thought. “Did they know of this flower before and never looked for it?”  
Finally she asked, “You knew about this?”

  
Her mother smiled at her and touched her face affectionately. “Yes, we did know, but only because one of our advisers at the time had read about it many years before.”

 

“I don’t understand, why didn’t you find it?”

  
“We did find it,” her mother confessed.

  
“What?” Rapunzel was shocked. How could her parents keep something like this a secret?

  
“Well, when I was pregnant with you I got very sick. So, your father sent out a search party to look for the flower. They found it, dug it up, and brought it back. I know this seems awful but we were missing a key piece in order to keep the flower,” she said taking the book and opening to a page close to the middle. A page had been torn out. “We think this page contained the way to activate the flower without destroying it. But as you can see it’s missing, so we had to destroy the flower so we could live. And it was all worth it when you came and had your golden hair, oh you were so beautiful.”

  
Rapunzel just stood there for a moment taking all of this in. “The flower saved me,” she thought. And then all at once, as if by magic, something clicked in her head. She took the book back from her mother and looked at the page after the one that had been torn out.

 

_The flower will begin to glow when the song is sung and will heal whoever is near._

  
“My hair had the flower’s magic,” she mumbled.

  
She walked away as her parents stared at her questioningly. She needed to know more about this library.

  
*****

  
Rapunzel was back in the library every day after that, looking for any information she could possibly find about the magic flower and her past.

  
“Uhhhg,” she sighed in frustration as she quickly flipped through more pages. “I just have to know Pascal. This is my life and I know so little about it. There just has to be something.”

  
What Rapunzel wasn’t telling Pascal was that she was really looking for a way to make her hair regain its magic, then she could help people. That was all she wanted, but it had been robbed from her for so many years in that tower, all because she was too afraid to go outside and find out the truth for herself.  
In the coming weeks she read many books, telling of magical things and creatures that had been found throughout the world. One book told of mermaids that lived in the depths of the oceans of the world. Some told stories of Vikings and dragons. And still others told of fairies, giants, and witches. In some, even the animals could talk, Rapunzel especially liked those. The stories went on and on. Many of these things she thought only to be legend, but then again if a flower could have healing magic why couldn’t these things be real as well?

  
One day, when she ventured deeper into the library then she ever had before, she came across a large book, a very large book. This book was larger than any she had ever seen before and it was black as night with red writing. Curious she approached the book and touched its binding.

  
“What could this possibly be?” she thought as she looked at it even closer.

  
Curiosity got the best of her and she decided to take the book down to have a look, even though she was almost sure that it had nothing to do with her past. Getting the ginormous book down was no easy task. First, Rapunzel was almost unable to get it out from between the other books surrounding it, it was like they were stuck to each other from being shushed together for so long. Then, when she finally managed to free it from the shelf, the book was so heavy she fell backwards from the force of her own tugging. She went flying, crashing into the shelf behind her, causing many books to fly from their homes on their shelves. She slowly stood up rubbing her head. Books could really hurt.

  
She opened the large black book with care, it was so old she was surprised it wasn’t already falling apart. Madra Gothel was written on the inside cover. She began reading.

  
The book told of a queen named Madra who used to rule her parents kingdom three hundred and forty years ago. She was a good but selfish queen and soon the kingdom would have no more of her selfish behavior and there was a revolt. The queen was overthrown after a long and bloody war, leaving many dead. She was cast out by her people and a new king and queen took over the thrown. (The new queen was actually Madra’s younger sister, who Rapunzel would learn later was her great, great, great grandmother.) She wandered the large forest that was just outside the kingdom. She became bitter and resented what her people had done to her. She roamed the forest for many years until one day she thought she could not possibly go any further. She was begining to get too old to travel in this manner and was growing weaker every day. Just as she thought that she would not be able to travel another day, she came across a strange yellow flower.

  
“That’s odd,” Rapunzel said to no one in particular. “That flower sounds really similar to the magic flower that gave my hair its power.” She read on.  
Madra remembered a fairytale she had once read when she still lived in the castle. At least she had thought it was a story. She sang the words to the poem that had been written in its pages, not thinking anything would happen. The flower began to glow and soon a yellow light was surrounding her and the flower. When the song ended, the glowing stopped and Madra felt better, better than she had in many years. When she stood, she was no longer hunched over, when she walked there was no more pain. She quickly found a small pond and looked in her reflection. She was young again. She couldn’t believe it, the magic of the flower was real. With her new found youth she built herself a home in the middle of mountains, hidden by a tunnel and vines. A few years later she began to grow weak again. She did not understand she thought the flower had healed her of the burden of age. She returned to the flower again and sang the same song as before and again her aging was reversed. Every time she used the flower to keep her aging at bay, the time before she needed to return to the flower became shorter and shorter.

  
Rapunzel becoming more and more interested in this strange women continued to read her story for many days. Then one day she read about the day Madra kidnapped a young girl from her room in the castle because she possessed the power of the golden flower. When Madra sang to the child her special song, the baby’s bright blond hair became ablaze with light and the magic would heal her once again.

  
Rapunzel didn’t need to read any more, she knew the rest. She became depressed, she had lost her family because of one woman’s selfish desire to never die and more so, she had lost the healing magic of her hair because of this same women, the women she used to call mother.

  
Pascal knew that Rapunzel needed to be cheered up. So he began tugging on her dress.

  
“What is it Pascal?” Rapunzel said. “Leave me alone.” But when Pascal wouldn’t let up she followed him.

  
He led her back to the library to a new section she had not explored yet.

  
“What are we doing here Pascal? I know there is nothing else here that could possibly help me get my hair’s magic back.”

  
Pascal was persistent and pushed a book off one of the shelves. The book was worn but still sturdy. I was a greenish color with golden designs on the spine. It was simply titled the library.

  
Rapunzel looked at the book skeptically. How could this possibly help her?

  
*****

  
“A few days later the castle was a buzz with people running about planning which case to take first. Rapunzel, with Pascal’s help of course, had discovered the secret of the library. Each book contained information about someone or something. There were even books about people who needed help, the sick, the lost, the hurt, the kidnapped, and many others. Rapunzel had found a new way to help those in need. She appointed Eugene as the head of the new search and rescue unit and sent them off to save the lost and the forgotten.

  
Unfortunately, not everyone could be rescued, it’s just the way it goes. Yeah I know it’s awful but it happens. So Rapunzel spent much of her time painting the walls that surrounded the kingdom, with pictures in memory of the people that could not be saved. Her life finally had the meaning she had been looking for and she lived happily ever after. See I told you it would be a good story.”

 


End file.
